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Age of Louis xiv
The Era of Louis XIV lasted from about 1651 AD until 1702 AD. It began with the restoration of monarchy in England, which ended the brief experiment as a republic after the English Civil War. It then ended on the eve of the War of Spanish Succession, the first of a series of major upheavals of the European balance of power. European politics was dominated by one man, Kingdom Louis XIV of France, who solidified royal power in the civil war of the Fronde and then subjugated the French nobility to the power of an absolute monarchy. With domestic peace assured, Louis XIV worked tirelessly to expand the borders of France making it the leading power in Europe. At the same time, the English monarch became merely a symbolic figurehead and Parliament was the dominant force in government. Russia too was flexing her muscles, against Sweden for control of the Baltic and against the Ottoman Empire for access to the Black Sea. In the Americas, European colonization continued in earnest. Meanwhile, as the Scientific Revolution reached its apex in Newton’ Principia, a new intellectual social movement was beginning that would profoundly influence actual revolutions; the Age of Enlightenment. History Louis XIV of France The reign of Louis XIII's son, Louis XIV Bourbon (1643-1715), would see absolute monarchy reach its height in France, and the country become the dominant power in Europe; his reign of 72 years was the longest in French history. Ascending to the throne at the tender age of four, Louis’ early reign was dominated by his mother and Cardinal Mazarin, a brilliant protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. The central theme of Mazarin's government was the struggle to maintain centralised autocratic rule against the demands of a fractious nobility, determined to regain the privileges which had been lost under Richelieu, to restore the rights of the French parliament (Estates General), and a more widespread sense of grievance over too much tax to pay for French involvement in the Thirty Years' War.. With the end of that war in 1648, France erupted into a complicated series of interconnected civil wars known as The Fronde (1648-53), and partially inspired by the English Civil War across the Channel, another great struggle against royal power. Yet the outcome in France would be profoundly different. In the five years of civil war there were three periods characterised by the fortunes of Mazarin, and two nobles, the Prince de Condé and Vicomte de Turenne, who had proved themselves brilliant generals in the Thirty Years' War. The first phase of the war was led by Turenne who seized control of Paris, and forced Mazarin to flee the capital along with the queen regent and the young king. Condé besieged Paris on their behalf, and within two months Mazarin was back in control again. It was not long however before Condé's arrogant behaviour estranged him from the court, and Mazarin had him arrested. This prompted the second phase of the civil war, with Turenne now acting in the imprisoned Condé's interest. With his enemies united against him, Mazarin was eventually forced to flee the country, with Condé taking control of the government. In September 1651, Louis XIV officially came of age and was strong enough to recall Mazarin from exile. This triggered the third and final phase of the civil war led by Condé. This time Turenne sided with the court against his old companion in arms, defeating him at the Battle of the Faubourg St Antoine (July 1652), bringing The Fronde to an end. In later years, the two great generals of the era would fight side by side in many of Louis' wars, visibly brought to heel. With the end of the Fronde, Mazarin continued to lay the foundations for Louis XIV’s absolutist reign. By the time Mazarin died in 1661, his own talented protégé Colbert became merely the king's loyal servants, for Louis would be his own first minister and directly control every aspect of state policy. He seemed to thrive on the notion of absolute rule, with a need to dominate his nobles, his ministers, his clergy, his subjects and his neighbours. To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem and cultivated the image of an omniscient and infallible Sun King around whom the entire realm orbited. In his palace at Versailles, constructed between 1664 and '82 with work continuing until 1710, Louis XIV created an architectural symbol of absolute rule. The task of building and decorating the ultimate royal residence was entrusted to architects, designers and gardeners such as André Le Nôtre, Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun and Jules Hardouin-Mansart. The aim of Versailles was both to dazzle his nobility into submission, and to keep them at court while Louis’ bureaucracy extended its control over their lands. Some 3000 courtiers lived at Versailles, jostling for the king's attention in an elaborate court ritual in which the king was always the centre of attention. Those who failed to pay court could expect no favours or positions. While Louis himself was the star in Versailles, he was also keenly interested in dance and theatre. He was fortunate in being able to call on France's three greatest dramatists, all working during his reign; Corneille, Racine and Molière. He founded the national ballet company, the Académie Royale de Danse (1661), and the national opera company, the Académie Royale de Musique (1669). He also established the French Academy of Sciences (1666), to encourage and protect the spirit of scientific research; France was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Another means by which Louis reduced the power of the old nobility was to sell titles liberally, and used the money to fund his many wars; Louis never called the French parliament (Estates General) during his long reign. Since nobles were exempt from many forms of taxes, this would come to haunt his successors, setting France on the course to financial ruin that would eventually lead to the French Revolution. Louis XIV was notorious for his aggressive approach to foreign policy. He saw his first opportunity to extend the kingdom's frontiers in Spanish Belgium, which he claimed as his wife's rightful inheritance, disregarding the fact that she had already renounced her claim. French troops marched across the border in May 1667 sparking the War of Devolution (1667-1668). After a brilliant campaign that gained France territory in Spanish Belgium, the king had to withdraw in the face of British and especially Dutch pressure. This unsatisfactory outcome led to the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which he sought to strengthen French commerce by supplanting the Dutch as a colonial power. The Dutch Republic was only saved by the desperate actions of William of Orange, who opened the dikes and flooded much of the country to halt the French advance. The conflict gradually evolved into a Europe-wide war with the Dutch, Austria, Spain, and Denmark on one side, while the French had only effectively Sweden as an ally. Yet, the French proved themselves the dominant military power on continental Europe, benefitting greatly from the military genius of Sebastien de Vauban, known for pioneering tactics in both designing fortifications and breaching them that would dominate for the next century. Nevertheless, with Britain threatening to intervene on the side of the Dutch, Louis elected to sue for peace. France gained further territory in Spanish Belgium, while the Dutch, though they had reasserted their independence, began to decline as a colonial and commercial power. During the 1680s, Louis expansionist policies continued, often using quasi-legal means to annex disputed cities and towns along France’s border; Strasbourg in 1681, and Luxembourg in 1684. Nevertheless, the position of France as the dominant military and diplomatic power in Europe began to deteriorate somewhat late in Louis XIV's reign. One factor was Louis' policy on religion. His determination to have his own way in all things, made him incapable of tolerating the Protestant minority in France. In the 1680s, troops were garrisoned in Huguenot villages with orders to cause as much mayhem as they liked to their heretical hosts. The violence led to mass conversions, enabling Louis to claim that there were now so few Huguenots in France that the Edict of Nantes, which granted Huguenots religious tolerance, could be revoked in 1685. At the same time, Louis had no intention of now submitting himself to the papacy; French bishops were forbidden from any appeal to the Pope without royal approval. With Protestantism now effectively illegal in the kingdom, some 400,000 French citizens, including many of the country's best craftsmen, tradesmen and other skilled workers, emigrated rather than deny their beliefs. Louis XIV’s act of religious zeal proved of great value in the places where they chose to settle, including Britain, Holland, Prussia and the American colonies, while drawing the ire of France's Protestant neighbors. Then in 1688, there was a game-changer in the European balance of power ''with the British Glorious Revolution which brought William of Orange to the throne. When Louis' aggressive foreign next took a French army across the border in September 1688, this time into Rhineland-Palatinate to press a tenuous claim to the great city of Mainz, it provoked the first coherent European response to French aggression. Britain, Holland, Austria, Spain, Prussia, Savoy, and Portugal all united against France as the Grand Alliance. The '''Nine Years' War' (1688–97) comprised of largely inconclusive fighting around France's borders and the French colonial holdings. Major battles, such as the French victories at Fleurus (1690), Steenkerke (1692), and Neerwinden (1693), were comparatively rare and were never decisive enough to bring about a settlement. Meanwhile the French navy suffered a serious setback at the hands of the Anglo-Dutch fleet at the Battle of La Hogue (May 1692). With no conclusive advantage and all sides financially exhausted, peace was settled in Treaty of Ryswick (1697), in which Louis XIV emerged with most of his territory intact. Yet ultimately the war was merely a jockeying for position for the main prize, the throne of Spain; the War of Spanish Succession. By the time of his death in 1715, Louis XIV had left an indelible mark on the culture and destiny of France and Europe. He dominated Europe as a kingly colossus, terrifying his neighbours with his territorial desires and built monuments to his own glory. He also left France on the verge of bankruptcy, with her industry and commerce in disarray. Yet if the measure of monarch is the scale of his ambition, then Louis’ reign had been truly magnificent. The example of his reign would be an inspiration for autocratic rulers throughout Europe for over two centuries. The Glorious Revolution in England With the restoration of the monarchy, Charles II (1660-85) proved a very different kind of ruler than Puritan Oliver Cromwell. His manner was light and easy, his court was decadent and cheerful, and his personal life debauched; one of his many mistresses Nell Gwyn, a former orange seller and actress, scandalised the nation. In a way, the sense of a new beginning was strengthened by the destruction of the capital: a particularly bad outbreak of plague in 1665 AD which killed perhaps 20% of the population, and the Great Fire of London (1666) consumed some 13,200 houses and 87 churches. In the aftermath, Christopher Wren helped rebuild the city and began construction of his architectural masterpiece; St. Paul's Cathedral (1711). Charles himself favoured a policy of religious freedom for all, since he himself had secret leanings towards Roman Catholicism from his time in exile in the French and Spanish courts; his brother James was openly Catholic. Religious tolerance was also closely tied to his political plans to recover greater authority over his kingdom from the Puritans. However, one of the changes that had survived the revolution was the independence of parliament. Charles II was far better at handling parliament than his father, but was powerless to oppose the powerful majority in parliament who passed a series of repressive acts from the 1660s which reserved for Anglicans religious freedom: the holding of public office, service in the armed forces, and even university education were restricted to Anglicans. No Catholic would hold any form of public office in England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland, until Catholic Emancipation in 1833. Catholics and non-conformist Protestant sects were vigorously persecuted: a Catholic was scapegoated and executed for the Great Fire of London; at least 22 Catholics were executed due to the fictitious Popish Plot to kill the king; and Quakers and Baptists were imprisoned by the thousands, including John Bunyan, the author of one of the most popular works of English literature Pilgrim’s Progress. Although Charles had numerous illegitimate children by his many mistresses, the king and his queen were childless. Given the religious tensions of recent decades, the prospect of the king’s brother James, openly Roman Catholic, succeeding to the throne was an explosive issue. Nevertheless, Charles II was passionately committed to securing his brother's rights, and James II (1685-88) ascension to the throne peacefully; the first Catholic monarch in England since Mary I, 127 years before. Almost inevitably the problem that had lurked at the heart of the English Civil War came back to the fore: who ruled England, the king and his appointed ministers, or parliament? James' conciliatory words at first reassured parliament, and there also remained the safeguard of the new king's two daughters who had been raised Protestant at the insistence of Charles II. However, the climate of anti-Catholic hysteria that had begun with the Popish Plot continued to grow. Parliament began to murmur at the brutally with which James suppressed a rebellion within months of his coronation led by the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II. They became concerned as the revoking of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV against the Protestant Huguenots took effect in France. They became alarmed, when James repeatedly used his royal dispensation to allow Roman Catholics to serve in senior offices of government and the army. Yet, the king decidedly failed to recognise that national tension had become acute as events spiralled dramatically out of his control, ordering the Anglican clergy in May 1688 to read from their pulpits a declaration of religious tolerance for all faiths, including Catholics. When the Archbishop of Canterbury publicly refused, James tried to face down the dissent by charging him with seditious libel. It proved a public relations disaster, with the Archbishop refusing bail and forcing the king to briefly consign him to the Tower of London. The fate of the monarch was sealed in June, when the king's wife gave birth to a son, an heir to the English throne who would doubtless be raised a Catholic. James' eldest daughter was married to Protestant William of Orange, head of state of the Dutch Republic; a hero to the Protestant cause on continental Europe. Within weeks of the birth of a Catholic heir, leading members of parliament invited William to claim the English throne; the Glorious Revolution (1688-89). William himself was eager to take-up the invitation having barely survived the Franco-Dutch War. In preparation for his arrival, a wave of malicious propaganda was printed and distributed around England claiming that James’ son and heir was actually a changeling, supposedly smuggled into the palace in a bedpan. William of Orange landed with an army at Torbay in November 1688. With parliament, the Church, and the people against him, James II fled the country, and William marched unopposed to London. In February 1689, parliament declared that in fleeing James had abdicated the throne, and offered the crown jointly to William III and Mary II (1689-1702); a glorious and bloodless revolution. It would not be bloodless in Ireland; the Williamite War in Ireland (1689-91). Jacobite Risings in Ireland and Scotland When James II fled from England for France in 1688, Ireland was dragged to the forefront of conflict once more. While exiled king was unpopular in England, he had widespread popular support in Ireland, and the Lord Deputy of Ireland remained loyal to him. Thus the island seemed the natural place for him to begin the attempt to regain his throne; the Williamite War in Ireland (1689-91). With the help of Louis XIV, James raised and army of some 6000 men in France, and landed in Ireland in March 1689. He was enthusiastically acknowledged king in Dublin; Irish Catholics eagerly expected now religious tolerance and to recover the lands confiscated over the past century by the Protestant Plantations. In April, James moved north to take control of Ulster, where the Protestant settlement was strongest. After victory at the Break of Dromore (March 1689), he occupied eastern Ulster, and began besieging the Protestant strongholds of Derry. However the defenders closed the gates, and the city held-out for 105 days until the garrison was relieved in August 1689, by the arrival an English army in the north of Ireland. There followed a year of wary and inconclusive skirmishing, until the rivals eventually confronted each other at the Battle of the Boyne (June 1690). William III had the larger army, about 35,000 men to 21,000, and he adopted bolder tactics. It was a victory for William but far from decisive, with much of the Franco-Irish army withdrawing in good order. However, the immediate flight of James II back to France proved politically decisive. The Irish Catholics continued to fight for another full year, hoping still to win concessions. Indeed, the Treaty of Limerick (October 1691) that finally ended the war agreed vague promises of secure possession of estates and tolerance for the Catholic religion. However, like all vague promises, they were later entirely disregarded by the victors. One clause offering transport to France for anyone in the Irish army was honoured, with several thousand seizing the opportunity, becoming known as the Wild Geese. There was an Irish regiment within the French army throughout the 18th century. By the end of the Williamite War, the vanquished Irish Catholic elite had either been wiped out, driven into exile, or abandoned any resistance. For the Protestant minority in Ireland, the defeat of James II ensured the survival of Protestant supremacy, and William III would be acclaimed a saviour with his victory at the Boyne commemorated each July. They quickly took steps to procure a lasting advantage over the Catholic majority. There was a further wave of Catholic land confiscation, reducing an already low figure of 22% of Ireland to a mere 14% land not in Protestant hands. From 1704, a series of draconian Penal Laws were imposed. Catholics were already banned from parliament and public office. Now they were banned from voting, and from running schools. They were not allowed to buy land, an existing Catholic estate had to be divided among all the children in the family, and even banned from owning a horse worth more than £5. The inevitable economic consequence was that Irish Catholics were gradually reduced them to subsistence smallholders. Catholic land ownership would drop to just 5% by 1776. The so-called Protestant Ascendancy would endure throughout the 18th century, until Anglo-Irish tension was re-awoken by the Europe wide upheaval stirred by the French Revolution. James II himself died in obscurity in exile in France in 1701, but Jacobite Risings would continue for another fifty-six years mainly in the highlands of Scotland. A minor revolt there in support of James II in 1688 was easily suppressed, but was followed by the Massacre of Glencoe (February 1692), a remarkably cold-blooded slaughter, that left 78 men, women and children dead and an undying resonance in the folk memory of the Highlands. The first rising in 1715 was under James’ son the Old Pretender proved a fiasco, but the Jacobite cause remained a romantic one, passionately held. It surfaced again thirty years later in 1745, led by James’ grandson Bonnie Prince Charlie. This final and far more serious attempt met with defeat at the Battle of Culloden (April 1746). The rising was never as serious as the draconian measures taken in the aftermath to pacify of the highlands of Scotland suggest. All aspects of Highland culture were systematically and ruthlessly wiped out. The Scottish Gaelic language, the bearing of arms, the bagpipes, and the wearing of tartans were forbidden. The clans suffered forced displacement as common lands were enclosed by aristocratic estates, and clan leaders were shipped to the colonies as penal labour. In one final Irony, the song written by Louis XIV's mistress Madame de Maintenon for Jacobite cause was expropriated, and later became the British national anthem. Parliamentary Monarchy in England With the reign of William III and Mary II (1689-1702), all the questions that had dogged half a century of political upheaval in Britain had been answered. The king ruled with the permission of parliament as codified in the Bill of Rights (1689); the rights of parliament in relation to the king, rather than personal freedoms and rights. England was now in effect ruled through parliament. The king still had a role but far from a commanding one: parliament's assent was required before a monarch may levy tax or raise an army in time of peace; a monarch may never suspend or dispense with any law; elections to parliament were to be freely held, speech within parliament was to be free, parliaments were to be summoned frequently; and a monarch may neither declare war nor leave the kingdom without the consent of parliament. William III had come to England to further his continental designs, but even when permission was granted to participate in the Nine Years' War (1688–97) the expenditure was carefully overseen by parliament. Even the question of succession was settled by parliament with the Act of Settlement (1701), which established the principle that only a Protestant could wear the crown; since William and Mary were childless, there were fears that the exiled Stuarts may slip back onto the English throne. When William III died in 1702, he was succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne (1702-14), Queen of Great Britain. The idea of a union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland had met with little favour since James I inherited both crowns in 1603. However, Scotland had recently suffered a disastrous failure in setting up a colony in 1698 in Darien, Panama. By the time the experiment was abandoned, in 1700, it had cost £200,000 and some 2000 lives. Tariff-free access to all English and colonial markets seemed commercially a rather more attractive option. The Act of Union (1707) abolished the Scottish parliament, giving the Scots instead a proportion of the seats in the British parliament at Westminster; union with Ireland that created the United Kingdom would not occur until 1800. Meanwhile, after no less than nineteen miscarriages, Anne died childless. With all Roman Catholics excluded from the line of succession, the throne fell to the son of Anne's only Protestant cousin, Duke George of Hanover; George I Hanover (1714-27). The fact that he could barely speak a word of English mattered little, for the king was by now merely a figurehead. Britain was now a Parliamentary Monarchy, rivelled only by the Dutch Republic in terms of representative government. The struggle for control of the state was between the two main political parties that had emerged: the Tory party who identified with Anglicanism, and the Whig’s representing the landowning nobility and wealthy middle-class. Peter the Great in Russia It was under Peter the Great (1682-1725 AD), the grandson of Michael I Romanov, that Russia was dragged kicking and screaming into Europe and transformed into a great power in the European balance of power. He became Tsar of Russia at just ten years of age. With his ambitious sister Sophia acting as regent, Peter was excluded from all government business, and sent to live in the small trading town of Preobrazhenskoye. Peter was an energetic and inquisitive youth who became fascinated by the Western Europeans who came to the town to trade and by news of a wider world beyond Russia. This experience would have a profound influence on his reign. When Peter came of age in 1689, Sophia conspired to have him killed and retain power herself, but the coup d’état was betrayed, and she spent the rest of her life in a convent. Peter inherited a nation that was isolated, rejected westernisation, and was severely underdeveloped compared to the culturally prosperous European countries. In 1697, Peter personally travelled throughout Western Europe on a diplomatic mission known as the Grand Embassy. Its chief purpose was to try and build an alliance against the Ottoman Turks, but it also sought to gather information on the economic and cultural life in the advanced countries of the West. On the diplomatic front, the Grand Embassy was a failure, with Western Europe preoccupied by the impending War of the Spanish Succession. Yet Peter gained inspiration for his planned reforms to modernise Russia, and learned shipbuilding from the great naval powers of the Dutch Republic and Britain. Peter returned to Moscow a thoroughly Westernised man, in European clothes and unshaven. A new tax was imposed on beards to make it clear to everyone in court that they should follow his example. Women were told to appear in public in German fashions. Peter did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy. During his reign, Peter undertook sweeping reforms that affected all areas of Russian life. Never, perhaps, has a ruler so rapidly and ruthlessly transformed a backward society. Peter abolished Russia's archaic form of government, and in its place established an effective centralised autocracy. The country was territorially divided into fifty provinces, each under a governor appointed by the Tsar, which in turn were subdivided into districts. The former council of nobles was replaced by an appointed executing ministry to coordinate the action of the various central and local organs through a viable civil service. The careers of all state servants - civil, court, military - proceeded upward in a hierarchy solely according to merit and seniority; at least in theory. To be educated was a prerequisite for service. Schools were secularised, many sons of the nobility were sent to European universities, and foreign experts recruited to educate his people about technological advancements. Peter reorganised and modernised his army using foreign advisors especially from Prussia, and for the first time in Russia, a professional navy was established. The peasants recruited earned liberation from serfdom for themselves and all their children. He also administered greater control over the reactionary Orthodox Church, replacing the patriarch of Russia with a synod of bishops so that no one rival could challenge to the Tsar’s power. He launched commercial, industrial and mining enterprises, and created a gentrified bourgeoisie population, although the vast majority of the Russian population remained illiterate serfs. Mirroring Western culture, he modernised the Russian alphabet, introduced the Julian calendar, and established the first Russian newspaper. In 1698, when the nobility rebelled against this Westernisation of Russia, the revolted was brutally suppressed; some 1,200 rebels were tortured and executed. In the aftermath, he ended the hereditary passing of high noble titles; from now on such titles were the prerogative of the Tsar in return for state service. At the beginning of Peter’s reign, Russia was territorially huge, but remained isolated from European sea trade, with no access to the Black Sea, the Caspian, or the Baltic. To win such warm water ports became the main goal of Russia's foreign policy. Peter's first military campaigns vividly demostrates the character of the man. In 1695, the Russian army besiege the Ottoman port of Azov on the Black Sea without success, but this did not discourage Peter. Over the winter, he ordered the construction of a fleet of ships at Voronezh. The next year, it sailed down the Don River, and blockaded the city into submission. To consolidate this success, the building of a large Black Sea Fleet was started. In 1700, Peter turned his attention to the Baltic, where access was blocked by Sweden, the dominant power in the region since the Thirty Years' War. To dislodge them, Peter formed a great alliance, comprising Russia, Denmark-Norway, Poland, and Saxony, and launched the Great Northern War (1700–21). Despite being attacked on three fronts, the war seemed at first to give conclusive proof that Sweden fully deserves her pre-eminence in the region. the Swedish forces managed to more than hold their own. Denmark-Norway was knocked out of the war within a few months. However, at the Battle of Poltava (1709) the Swedes suffered a catastrophic defeat. The war ended in the defeat of Sweden, leaving Russia as the new dominant power in the Baltic region. In 1712, Peter established the city of St. Petersburg on the Neva River and moved the capital there, deeming it Russia's "window to Europe." In celebration of his triumphs, Peter’s title was changed from Tsar to that of Emperor of all the Russians. By the time of the death of Peter the Great in 1725, Russia was emerging as a new great power in European politics. It is a remarkable fact that the Russian Empire established by Peter the Great was ruled for most of the next seven decades by women, culminating in a German princess, who justifiably becoming known as Catherine the Great. The Americas By the early 1700s, the accidents of history and the facts of geography had combined to form a precarious balance of power in North Americas, between Spanish, French, and British interests. The Spanish had first been brought into Mexico on a quest for gold. The natural direction for Spanish expansion was northwards to the west of the Rockies into the regions which are now New Mexico, Arizona and California. The search for the Northwest Passage had sent the French up the St Lawrence River to establish a vigorous royal province in Canada based largely on trade in furs. As they explored through and around the Great Lakes, they began also to move down the Mississippi and its many tributaries running south. By 1682, the French had reached the mouth of the great river, claiming the region as Louisiana, in honour of Louis XIV; it was some time before the region becomes a desirable colony but by 1718 New Orleans was founded. Meanwhile, the British enjoyed a fertile eastern coastal fringe, neatly confined by the Appalachian Mountains. The eventually Thirteen British Colonies were regarded as existing largely for the benefit of the mother country; the last Georgia was settled in 1733 AD. The northern colonies exported fish, the wealthiest middle colonies grew wheat, barley, oats, rye, and corn, and the southern colonies mainly tobacco, indigo and rice. From the start the import of slaves was predominantly in the south. Although British colonies, they were highly diverse with many German and Dutch settlers as well as French Huguenots and other radical Christian groups. Each of the colonies had a slightly different governmental structure, but typically a governor appointed from London, who relied upon a locally elected legislature to vote taxes and make laws. Each of the three colonial groups engaged in periodic clashes with the native Indians, the biggest of which were King Philip's War (1675–78) and the Yamasee War (1715–17). Meanwhile, conflict between the Spanish, French, and British were little more than skirmishes. There seemed to be room for all, until the Ohio valley became a dangerous area of friction in the mid-18th century. In South America, the discovery of gold near Sao Paulo in Brazil in 1695, led to the first gold rush in history. By the time diamond deposits were also found in 1729, the centre of gravity in the country had moved distinctly to the south. Europeans in the Far East In the East, English and Dutch dominance of the region was stating to be challenged by the new player France after her acquisition of Pondicherry in 1673. Within a few decades the French would be England’s main colonial rival in India. Late Scientific Revolution During the seventeenth century, mathematics experienced a great deal of progress in the development of algebra, trigonometry, and advanced geometry undertaken by the multi-skilled Frenchmen Rene Descartes (d. 1650). It enabled the evolving chain of the Scientific Revolution to achieve its capstone in the work of Sir Isaac Newton (d. 1726). He integrated Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Galileo's forays into the laws of gravity into a comprehensive understanding of the organization of the universe according to the law of universal gravitation. Newton's Principia (1687), in which he developed the mathematical fields of classical mechanics and calculus, is seen as the key which unlocked the mysteries of the universe. Other fields made great leaps forward too: The Sceptical Chymist (1661) by Robert Boyle (d. 1691) laid the foundation of modern chemistry; Opticks (1704) also by Newton advanced the field of optics; advances were made in electricity by Otto von Guericke (d. 1668) and Thomas Browne (1682); Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (d. 1723) constructed powerful single lens microscopes, opening up the micro-world of biology; and Institutiones Medicae (1708) by Herman Boerhaave the father of physiology or the Dutch Hippocrates as he was called. Meanwhile in medicine, following breakthrough work of William Harvey (d. 1657) in the understanding of the human body, important experiments were taking place in blood transfusion and inoculation. Science was also producing practical applications, such as the mercury barometer, pocket watch, and the steam pump. Age of Enlightenment Meanwhile, as the Renaissance helped inspire the Scientific Revolution, so the Scientific Revolution would influence the intellectual social movement known as the Age of Enlightenment. Two years after Newton’ Principia, John Locke (d. 1704) published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the work that provided the philosophical toolkit for the Enlightenment’s major advances. Building on the ideas of Francis Bacon (1626) and René Descartes (d. 1650), Locke postulated that at birth the mind was a blank slate, and that knowledge was gained through accumulated experience rather than some innate ability. Also, that people have natural rights that are beyond the authority of any government to dismiss. His theories figured prominently in the works of the later giants of High Enlightenment political philosophy: Voltaire (d. 1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778), and Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) who would advance the ideals of liberty, natural rights, tolerance, constitutional government, separation of church and state, and the social contract between government and the people. Category:Historical Periods